The struggling biotech still has turnaround potential
The market has written Moderna (MRNA) stock off.
And honestly? I get it. The stock has fallen more than 90% from its 2021 peak. Revenue has collapsed from $19 billion at the height of the pandemic to roughly $1.9 billion last year. Its mRNA flu vaccine hit a regulatory snag. The CMV program (viral herpes) was scrapped. And Wall Street’s consensus price target, a measly $36, sits below where the stock is trading right now.
But that’s the rearview-mirror image of Moderna stock… I’m looking through the windshield.
Trading at around $50 a share, the company has roughly $19 per share in net cash, a personalized cancer vaccine showing a major reduction in recurrence rates, and a pipeline that could deliver six respiratory products by 2028. That doesn’t look like a dying COVID-19 stock to me. It looks like an mRNA platform company entering its next act.
Here’s why the “COVID company” narrative is dead wrong, and why MRNA stock deserves a place on your radar right now.
MRNA Stock: The “COVID Company” Narrative Is Dead Wrong
Wall Street keeps trying to cram Moderna into a small box labeled “COVID-19 vaccine maker.” That story is over, so the thinking goes… sell the stock and move on.
This is lazy analysis.
Moderna was never just about COVID-19. The company spent years before the pandemic developing one of the world’s most sophisticated mRNA delivery platform. COVID-19 wasn’t the business model. It was the proof of concept.
Now comes the real test: can that platform generate durable revenue across oncology, respiratory disease, and rare conditions?
Here’s what mRNA technology actually does: it instructs your cells to produce specific proteins, which then train your immune cells to attack whenever it sees that specific protein. It can be used to fight cancer cells, neutralize viruses, or correct rare genetic disorders.
In other words, it’s programmable medicine. And Moderna now has one of the deepest late-stage mRNA pipelines in biotech.
Over the next several years, multiple candidates are expected to move into Phase 3 trials.. And once these therapies start showing their efficacy, Moderna could quickly see unsolicited buyout offers from large pharma companies seeking a piece of that pie.
If even one major oncology program succeeds – particularly the personalized cancer vaccine developed with Merck – Moderna stops being valued like a declining vaccine business and starts being valued like an oncology platform.
That shift alone could justify a materially higher multiple.
In fact, a $100 share price is not out of the question – a near 90% upside. It requires the market to price Moderna as a platform biotech with validated cancer data… not as a fading pandemic relic.
The Cancer Vaccine Could Change Everything
The headline catalyst for MRNA is mRNA-4157 (V940), Moderna’s personalized cancer vaccine developed alongside Merck (MRK) and its blockbuster immunotherapy Keytruda (pembrolizumab).
In January, early trial data showed that mRNA-4157 plus Keytruda reduced recurrence or death risk by 49% versus Keytruda alone. That’s a staggering number, the kind that makes oncologists sit up straight.
Now, Moderna and Merck have eight Phase 2 and Phase 3 trials running across multiple tumor types, including melanoma (skin cancer), non-small cell lung cancer, bladder cancer and renal cell carcinoma. Phase 3 INTerpath-001 data for melanoma could arrive this year, with a potential FDA approval pathway opening in 2027. We should expect readouts from another five by 2027.
Let’s put this in context. The global cancer immunotherapy market has already surpassed $150 billion annually, and is expected to grow 9% through 2033 as the world’s population ages, according to Grand View Research. Even capturing a small slice of that would dwarf Moderna’s entire current revenue base. The market is not pricing this in. Not even close.
The Balance Sheet Is Your Margin of Safety
One of the oldest rules in biotech investing is simple:
Don’t bet on companies that might run out of money before they prove their drugs work.
That’s a legitimate concern for many pipeline-stage biotechs. It’s not a legitimate concern for Moderna.
Here’s the math: MRNA currently trades at roughly $50 per share. The company holds approximately $7.5 billion in net cash from its blockbuster COVID-19 vaccine ($8.1 billion gross), which works out to $19 per share. That means you’re essentially getting the entire Moderna pipeline for around $32 per share once you strip out the cash.
The pipeline (which includes cancer vaccines, RSV, flu, norovirus, rare diseases) for $32 a share. That’s not expensive. That’s a blue-light special.
Management has also done the hard work of getting the cost structure under control. Operating expenses were slashed by $2.2 billion in 2025, and cash costs are projected to fall to $4.2 billion in 2026. Factoring in cashflows from COVID and flu vaccines (which I must emphasize are still flowing in), Moderna should have $5.5 billion to $6.0 billion of cash remaining by the end of 2026. That gives the company a clear pathway to several vaccine approvals by 2028 before money comes close to running out. When a company with 1) a legitimate shot at transformative cancer treatment data has 2) a fortress balance sheet, that’s a rare combination in biotech that’s too good to pass up. You don’t see it often.
The Platform Compounds
Beyond the cancer program, Moderna’s respiratory franchise is still moving ahead.
The company already has three approved products: Spikevax (COVID), mNEXSPIKE (next-gen COVID), and mRESVIA (RSV). By 2028, management is targeting six approved respiratory vaccines, adding seasonal flu, a combination COVID/flu shot, and a norovirus vaccine to the roster.
The flu shot alone represents a meaningful market opportunity, especially in Europe. Management is projecting 10% revenue growth in this segment in 2026, which should provide incremental support for cash flow as other drugs reach the regulatory finish line.
Meanwhile, rare disease programs in propionic acidemia (mRNA-3927) and methylmalonic acidemia (mRNA-3705) are on track for registrational data in 2026, with potential launches in 2028. These are small patient populations, but they represent areas of extreme unmet need where mRNA-based enzyme replacement therapy has a genuine shot at becoming the standard of care.
This is what a platform company looks like. Multiple shots on goal across multiple markets, all leveraging the same core technology.
The Skeptic’s Case… And Why I’m Not Swayed
To be fair, the bears have real ammunition.
The collapse of COVID-19 vaccine demand in America has left Moderna with an unsustainably large pipeline to service, and management has since cutat least four promising drug candidates to rein in spending. RSV uptake has been awful, due to competition in the market. The CMV program failure stung. And the stock, despite being cheap, will likely remain volatile.
In addition, my 90% upside target still leaves Moderna 80% below its all-time peak. (A stock that drops 90% and then rises 90% is still down four-fifths). I agree with the bears that Moderna’s $450 peak share price was simply too high, given competition from other mRNA developers.
Perhaps most worryingly, the current U.S. administration seems to dislike vaccines… even the types that seek to cure cancer. Government funding for mRNA vaccines has been slashed, forcing biotechs to finance research on their own. Earlier this month, the Food and Drug Administration flat out rejected Moderna’s application to market the country’s first mRNA flu shot, only to reverse course several days later. Moderna is not operating in a favorable regulatory environment.
I hear all of that. I’m not dismissing it.
But here’s the key: none of those risks touch Moderna’s core oncology thesis. If Phase 3 data for mRNA-4157 hits, all other concerns will suddenly melt away. The market will reprice MRNA as an oncology company, and the current $20 billion market cap will look like a rounding error as companies from Pfizer (PFE) to Merck (MRK) begin making buyout offers
The Bottom Line
Moderna is one of the most compelling risk/reward setups in biotech today.
Investors are buying a validated mRNA platform, a cancer vaccine with genuinely compelling early data, and a management team that has demonstrated it can cut costs while maintaining pipeline momentum. All this comes at a price that bakes in roughly $18 of cash per share.
Piper Sandler’s $69 price target on MRNA stock strikes me as a reasonable near-term target. But if the cancer data comes in, we could be talking multiples of today’s price over a multi-year horizon.
The market gave up on Moderna…
That’s exactly why it’s worth paying attention to.
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